Friday, June 20, 2014

A Big Move

You read that right! My husband, son (aged 12), my weenie dog and I will be making the huge move to Shanghai, China. What?!?!?!?!

I don't know if you've noticed that my blog has been a little slow over the past few months, but my family has been dealing with some pretty heavy issues. Then, in the middle of dealing with everything I was called up by my principal to say that because of budget cuts I was going to be laid-off of 60% of my teaching contract. This is from a school that I've taught at for 6 years and a place where I've built the choral program up from virtual extinction to bursting at the seams... But, $$ talks and when push comes to shove the non-choral (band) classes I taught were trimmed down to one teacher and I was let go.

Literally, the night my principal called me I was in bed surfing on my phone and thought I would search: Teaching Abroad. I was at once amazed, excited, and optimistic about my future. The next day I updated my resume and applied for 20-30 jobs all over the globe. Places from arctic Canada to Mauritius, to, well, China. After I applied for the jobs there was a long wait. I stalked my email inbox for 3-4 weeks until I got a first interview with Sino-Canada High School. The interview (skype) went well and I didn't hear anything for a couple of weeks so I thought it was over until I got an email saying I had a second interview with the principal. (Yay!) The interview went very well and during the conversation I mentioned my husband was a teacher too and would also be looking for work. The principal asked if my husband would want an interview, RIGHT NOW, and he was game! A few days later we were both offered contracts, I am going to teach musical theatre, and Ian will teach middle school...

Crazy, right? So we'll be leaving in 2 months and in the meantime I am up to my ears in preparations for a move... We're selling our house, our car, putting most of our stuff into storage, farming out two animals... It's a lot of work, BUT, I will be taking a fair amount of my crafting supplies with me, I mean, I'm moving to China, I'm not dying, lol... I will have to drop one design team, but other than that, I will be back to normal in September!!

So for now, I will be posting until August then I will for real need to pack and ship all of my stuff to China, I just won't be posting as often! Any hints/recommendations are welcomed with open arms. Please let me know if you've made a move to a far-off land and what you did to make things easier.. I am relying heavily on advice to make this move as smooth as possible!